The Brief

About 100,000 Californians can expect their phone bills to go up next year if state regulators grant AT&T permission to stop offering a federal service discount for low-income residents.

The federal Lifeline program, which has been running since the '80s, gives eligible customers up to a $9.25 monthly phone service discount and $34.25 off for those on tribal lands.

Advocates say it's a critical service for older adults, people with disabilities and others who live on a fixed income.

AT&T is applying to give up its designation as an “eligible telecommunications carrier,” or ETC, which means it would no longer offer the federal Lifeline program to low-income residents and people who live in remote areas.

An ETC receives financial assistance from the federal government to provide high quality, affordable telephone service to customers of all income levels.

(California has its own subsidy program called LifeLine with a capital “L”, which will not be affected).

About 50 other companies offer federal Lifeline, but so far, advocates say AT&T is the only company in California asking to drop the service.

A spokesperson for AT&T says it wants to be relieved of its ETC designation because of the “FCC’s plans to phase out” the federal Lifeline subsidy. The program is expected to run out of money by December unless lawmakers vote to extend it.

Leaders of the consumer advocacy group The Utility Reform Network (TURN) say the November presidential election could determine the future of Lifeline, but that funding is likely to be extended, even on a temporary basis.

Landline service

The request comes at the same time AT&T is seeking permission to phase out landline service in California.

For many low-income residents this comes as a double blow — losing the federal discount in addition to losing the less-expensive landline service.

“The passion that folks have in expressing their needs to have this service, it's just been overwhelming,” said TURN attorney Ashley L. Salas.

The California Public Utilities Commission is accepting public input on both cases until a final decision is made this fall.

Public comments

Thousands of residents have weighed in on AT&T’s requests during public comments in person and online. Here’s a selection:

Sara Sunstein of Richmond said she’s a low-income person and “very much appreciates” having Lifeline rates. “What I don't understand is why the rates seem to increase more and more frequently in recent years. Please vote against AT&T's request to stop Lifeline rates that are subsidized by the federal government anyway.”

Suzanne England in Los Angeles said she relies on her landline with its Lifeline discount. “This is a public utility that I expect should be required,” she said. “I depend on this landline and the ‘Lifeline’ discount. Please do not remove this phone option.”

A. Webb Santa Cruz said they live on a tight budget and have struggled with inflation. “From where would I cut my essential spending to pay for a cellphone?! I am fixed on a very low income, and the Lifeline service I have on my landline fully supports my life needs and daily high volume of local calls to my elderly mother whom I look after every day,” they wrote.

To be approved, AT&T must demonstrate that another ETC provider can offer universal support in the areas where it wishes to surrender service. Here is a map of the different service territories that could be impacted.

The next CPUC hearing on AT&T’s plans will be held April 9.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

For more than six years, a Los Angeles-area fiduciary altered bank statements and fudged court reports to steal more than $6 million from his clients, the California Attorney General’s Office claims, setting up what it called a “Ponzi-style” scheme to rob people who can’t take care of themselves.

In May, state prosecutors filed grand theft charges against Gregory Oveross and his accountant, Faranita L. Corvalan, alleging what would be one of the largest fiduciary thefts in California history.

Oveross and Corvalan pleaded not guilty and have been released on bond, awaiting trial.

Prosecutors say Oveross misled his clients and the probate court. But court and other public records reviewed by CalMatters show that court officials and the state Professional Fiduciaries Bureau missed red flags years before Oveross was charged, highlighting our ongoing reporting into the state’s weak oversight of fiduciaries, who have the power to control people’s finances and basic aspects of their lives.

For example, in one case Oveross allegedly wrote himself 19 checks totaling $670,000 over the course of a year from one client’s accounts. Even though the state accounting form asks for check numbers for every expense, Oveross left that column blank.

Still, Superior Court Judge Deborah L. Christian approved the financial report.

“Not having check numbers would be a big red flag,” said Judge Sandra Bean, the supervising judge for probate court in Alameda County. “It’s all very practical. If something smells bad, it probably is.”

In response to past abuses, lawmakers in 2006 passed a law that required fiduciaries to turn in more detailed documentation to account for how they spent their clients’ money. By forcing fiduciaries to list check numbers, the courts would ostensibly be able to spot if check numbers were missing and stop fiduciaries from writing hidden checks.

In a separate case, the Attorney General’s Office said Oveross never paid a $1.7 million inheritance to beneficiaries after the court appointed him to manage a deceased person’s estate.

Records do not indicate that Los Angeles Superior Court ordered a hearing to ensure the money had been distributed. State law does not require courts to automatically schedule such a review, creating a hodgepodge of rules across California counties.

The courts in some counties automatically set up such a hearing. Others, such as Sacramento, San Joaquin and Santa Clara counties, do not.

During the time of Oveross’ alleged thefts, the Los Angeles Superior Court did not automatically schedule such hearings. The court changed its rules in January 2026, automatically scheduling follow-up review dates after approving the final distribution, said Rob Oftring, a spokesperson for the court.

Additionally, public records obtained by CalMatters show that Oveross omitted from his annual statement a case in which he’d been accused of wrongdoing. The statements, which are supposed to give the public and the bureau a window into fiduciaries who’ve been in trouble, are based on the honor system. Fiduciaries sign the statements under penalty of perjury.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a 2021 law that would have required courts to notify the bureau when judges punished fiduciaries for abusing their licenses. However, that requirement was to go into effect only if lawmakers funded it. They haven’t.

In 2022 and 2023, Oveross submitted statements to the bureau that didn’t answer a question about whether he had settled any complaints, records show. The bureau still issued Oveross a valid license each year, according to its website. The bureau declined to answer any questions about Oveross, citing the pending criminal case.

The state Professional Fiduciaries Bureau was established two decades ago to protect consumers after a news investigation showed that judges were not preventing abuse and conflicts of interest by fiduciaries. However, CalMatters’ reporting this year has found that some of the same issues remain.

The bureau says it depends on courts to police fiduciaries, and the courts often depend on the bureau, creating a loop of blame and little accountability.

Oftring said an attorney reviews fiduciaries’ accounting and confirms that “all required information and supporting documentation are provided, that financial activity is clearly explained, and that the accounting is accurate and balanced.”

When asked why the court approved Oveross’ accounting, he said judges and court staff are “prohibited from publicly commenting on any pending or impending proceeding in any court.”

In the arrest declaration, the Attorney General’s Office said Oveross had a “systematic and pervasive pattern of asset misappropriation, discrepancies, unauthorized fund diversions and non-compliance with probate court mandates.”

Attorneys for Oveross and Corvalan didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story.

Oveross kept his license for years while under investigation

Jean C. Elbert had dementia. Her extended family was far away, and her closest relative, her brother, was battling Alzheimer’s. Elbert’s family asked the court to appoint a fiduciary to handle her care and finances. The court appointed Oveross, a longtime fiduciary, in August 2018.

Oveross managed Elbert’s conservatorship for about a year. During his time as her conservator, prosecutors say, Oveross wrote 19 checks to himself and didn’t include any of them on the financial report he filed with the court.

After Elbert died in August 2019, Oveross told the court that he had $1.8 million to distribute to her heirs, and the court ordered him to deliver the money.

Oveross did not send $764,000 owed to Elbert’s brother, according to court filings and state prosecutors.

The brother’s son sued for his father’s share of the inheritance, court records show. The son’s attorney discovered that Oveross had taken money from the conservatorship and estate, according to the court filings, and that he had used money from other clients’ accounts to eventually pay Elbert’s brother his inheritance.

In May 2024, the two sides entered into a settlement agreement, but state records show the fiduciary did not report it on his 2025 annual statement, as is required.

All told, the fiduciary made $1.3 million in unauthorized payments from Elbert’s accounts, according to court filings from the Attorney General's Office.

In another case, Oveross was in charge of Guadalupe Rodriguez Diaz’s $2 million estate after she died in 2019.

After paying the bills, Oveross told the court that Diaz’s estate had $1.6 million left for her beneficiaries.

The Attorney General’s office says Oveross opened “a secondary set of accounts” and made “unauthorized” transfers to himself and Corvalan, and to another trust he managed. In court filings, they say Oveross spent nearly the entire estate on himself and his associates.

Diaz’s heirs, prosecutors say, never got a dime from the accounts.

“Notably, no transactions related to heir distributions were observed within these accounts,” prosecutors wrote in court records.

The criminal case was launched after Elbert’s nephew and one of Oveross’ clients filed complaints to the bureau in 2023, according to court records. Shortly afterward, the bureau investigator forwarded the case to the California Department of Justice.

As the criminal investigation played out, Oveross was allowed to work with a valid fiduciary license for more than two years.

His license was suspended less than two weeks after he was arrested. In its order prohibiting Oveross from practicing, the bureau asked him to turn over a complete list of all matters in which he serves as a fiduciary.

Those are details the bureau should have had. The bureau requires its fiduciaries to accurately report them every year on their annual statements.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

California lawmakers are advancing an effort to preserve oil refinery safety rules that were designed to prevent fires, explosions and other catastrophes despite industry opposition.

The union-backed proposal, Senate Bill 966, would enshrine existing worker protections into state law as California regulators move to revise them in response to a legal settlement with the state’s oil lobby.

“We're trying to get the best regulations possible for these industries,” said Nick Plurkowski, a leader of a Bay Area local of the United Steelworkers. “An industry where you have to write into regulation … that it's okay to refuse work that could lead to your death.”

The bill would lock in workers’ rights to refuse dangerous work, participate in safety reviews, choose their own representatives for safety planning and report hazards anonymously.

The measure is among several targeting the oil and gas industry this year, including proposals aimed at refinery closure plans and a bid to curb high gas prices during wartime by expanding the state’s price-gouging law. Lawmakers’ focus on refineries comes as California drivers face the nation’s highest gasoline prices and the Iran war pushes up the global price of crude oil.

The worker safety bill would lock in provisions adopted after a 2012 Chevron refinery fire in Richmond that prompted 15,000 people to seek medical attention. The Western States Petroleum Association, the state’s main oil lobby, formally opposes the measure, arguing it would override a 2024 legal settlement the industry reached with regulators.

The industry and union players fighting over the bill do not contribute much money directly to lawmakers, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database. Campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry can be toxic in elections for the state’s politically dominant Democratic Party.

But WSPA is a powerhouse when it comes to lobbying. It’s routinely the biggest spender in the Capitol among the many interest groups that hire lobbyists, according to state records.

WSPA reported lobbying on the measure, and is joined by some of the state’s largest refiners, Chevron, Marathon Petroleum and PBF Energy, according to lobbying reports reviewed by CalMatters. Those three companies run refineries that comprise nearly 90% of California’s crude oil refining capacity.

The proposal, which cleared a key fiscal committee this week, is authored by State Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat from Long Beach, and comes after an explosion last year at Chevron’s El Segundo refinery. That blast rattled windows across nearby neighborhoods and shot uncontrolled columns of flame into the air, raising new concerns about the safety of the state’s aging refineries.

Zach Leary, a lobbyist for WSPA, in testimony at a legislative hearing earlier this summer, argued the proposal would override a 2024 settlement under which California regulators agreed to pursue changes to refinery safety rules in exchange for the industry dropping years of litigation.

“Unfortunately, it's this type of regulatory and legislative whiplash that creates a business environment that is very difficult to operate in,” Leary said in June.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Department of Finance also opposes the bill, arguing it adds additional costs not included in this year’s budget, could expose the state to further litigation expenses and may conflict with an ongoing process to rewrite the rules following the 2024 settlement.

California has some of the nation’s toughest refinery safety measures because of two earlier explosions: the 2012 Richmond refinery fire, and another in 2015 at a refinery in Torrance then owned by ExxonMobil that came close to releasing modified hydrofluoric acid, a potentially deadly industrial chemical.

The worker rules are built around the concept of process safety, which requires refineries to identify and address hazards before they lead to accidents and gives workers a direct role in safety reviews and investigations. The goal is to prevent failures that can lead to refinery fires and explosions.

But WSPA sued to block the rules in 2019, calling them unclear and invalid. California quietly settled in 2024. In response to the settlement, the California Environmental Protection Agency finalized amendments this year to its refinery safety rules, including how workers take part in safety decisions and how hazards are reviewed. A companion rule revision at the state’s workplace safety agency is ongoing.

Plurkowski, of the local United Steelworkers union, said that the outcome at CalEPA prompted the push for the worker safety measures to be written into law. The regional United Steelworkers District 12 sponsored the measure.

“Part of what led to SB 966 was how quickly CalEPA folded,” Plurkowski said. “People's lives are at stake, communities are at stake, we've learned enough lessons to know better at this point.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

At the peak of efforts to quell a massive warehouse fire in Boyle Heights in June, firefighters sent 12,000 gallons of water per minute at the flames — by water cannons, aerial ladder pipes and helicopter flybys.

The overwhelming rush of water, millions of gallons over the eight days to subdue the fire, filtered through the Lineage cold-storage facility’s solar panels, insulation and freezers before feeding into nearby storm drains, carrying with it an array of toxic metals, chemicals and tainted food that eventually flowed into the Los Angeles River.

If this were an oil spill, sewage leak or a chemical tank explosion, a standardized system would kick in to notify downstream cities and residents that a dangerous flow is heading their way.

But in this case, that didn’t happen, as experts say a gap in environmental rules made it so the hazardous firefighting runoff skirted the threshold for such a response.

Water is dropped by helicopter at a warehouse fire in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 17, 2026.

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Jae C. Hong

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AP Photo

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According to records reviewed by the Long Beach Post, the city didn’t receive outside warning that its waterways might be unsafe until June 25, eight days after the fire began, when a county public works employee sent a brief email saying fish had begun dying in the nearby wetlands, and that it might be tied to the fire.

“We wanted to alert the City, as your beaches are located at the receiving end of the L.A. River, and wanted to share this information to keep you informed of the situation to ensure that public health and safety are protected,” the email stated.

Even then, that warning never made it to the public. Two months later, Long Beach residents have never been told exactly what chemicals and metals may have been sent downstream and what, if any, harm could have come from swimming, wading and boating in the public waterways that connect to the river. Emergency declarations made by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom days earlier addressed only the toxins sent into the air.

When it comes to firefighting runoff, “there are no mandated protocols” for warning downstream neighbors of the risk, according to Elizabeth Vazquez, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Public Works department that manages the L.A. River.

Long Beach’s only public notice came as a city health advisory after routine testing on June 23 discovered high bacteria levels in the ocean. Officials posted warning notices about the bacteria, total coliform, fecal coliform and enterococcus on five segments of beach from Fifth Place to the west side of the Belmont Pier.

Bacteria levels were so high that they reached the peak of what could be registered, said Emmanuel Carrera Ruedas, a community scientist and member of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, an ecological watchdog group. “We don’t really even know the full extent of the bacteria in the water, but what we do know is that it’s at least thirty times higher than normal levels,” he added.

Emmanuel Carrera Ruedas wears a mask and gloves as he prepares to collect water samples from the LA River on Wednesday, July 1.

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Steve Saldivar

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A health department spokesperson said last week that no beaches or waterways were closed, even though bacteria levels were high enough to make someone sick. This is standard practice, the department says, as closures are typically reserved for when there is known or suspected sewage or chemical discharge.

The extremely poor water quality was odd for this time of year, according to Heal the Bay, which tracks water quality and indicated it’s normally much better in July. Despite the anomaly, the city’s notices did not mention any potential connection to the fire or any other pollutants it may have sent into the ocean, as the link to the fire has not been confirmed. The city health department tests only for bacteria; it does not routinely test for chemicals, heavy metals or viruses.

Researchers at UCLA and Columbia University, as well as the city of LA’s Bureau of Sanitation, are still testing to determine what hazardous chemicals were in the water and to what extent the runoff carried toxins to the coast. Teams say they screened for 14 metals like cadmium and lead, along with metalloids like arsenic and selenium.

Frustrated by the weak outside warning and the city health department’s limited response, Long Beach City Council members argue there should have been better notice to the thousands of people fishing, boating and swimming in the lower estuaries.

“When water quality is in doubt, families avoid the water, people stop fishing, visitors stay away and local businesses suffer,” according to a July 21 letter from the City Council. “Even perceived risks can limit shoreline use. Protecting our water quality is a regional equity issue, as downstream pollution threatens access to one of the most accessible coastal resources for Southeast Los Angeles communities.”

The Long Beach City Council is now demanding that regional, state and county agencies rethink how they warn each other in the event that dangerous runoff is heading their way.

Councilmember Kristina Duggan, who has championed the idea alongside council members Tunua Thrash-Ntuk and Cindy Allen, argued the problem isn’t some individual or department failing to give notice, but a regulatory blind spot that needs systemic change.

Typically, when a major sewage spill or crude oil slips into the river or sea, a strict, standardized chain of alerts sound off, starting through the California Office of Emergency Services that can trigger beach closures and rapid water testing.

But there is no automatic mechanism that forces agencies to respond the same way for firefighting runoff once it leaves the scene. In fact, it is conditionally exempt from federal and state storm sewer rules.

Instead, departments rely on an informal patchwork of inter-agency courtesy calls; there is no single standardized system dictating who calls whom, how fast or under what threshold.

Without a system in place, scores of dead fish were found in the Dominguez Gap Wetlands before any agency publicly acknowledged the runoff might endanger the water, right before one of the city’s busiest beach weekends of the year.

“Without timely information, our public health professionals cannot make decisions about risks to our residents and our recreational water risks,” Duggan said.

It’s an oversight that’s had consequences before.

In 2021, water used to douse a warehouse fire in Carson sent packaged hand sanitizer into the Dominguez Channel, killing marine life, mystifying residents with a smell of rotten eggs and prompting a proposed $17 million state penalty against property owners. During the 2025 Palisades fires, rain sent toxic ash runoff — containing pesticides, asbestos, plastics and lead from burned cars, electronics, batteries and building materials — into local waters.

In some instances, such as during a January 2025 power plant fire in Moss Landing and another instance at the Port of Los Angeles in September 2024, firefighters thought it environmentally safer to let fires scorch through deposits of lithium-ion batteries rather than douse them and send hazardous runoff into storm drains.

Environmental advocates say these incidents fit a recurring pattern along the concretized Los Angeles River, which lacks natural floodplains and wetlands to filter urban runoff.

Firefighters continue to work on a warehouse fire in Boyle Heights on Sunday, June 21, 2026.

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Steve Saldivar

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The LA Local

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“What is clear is that our infrastructure and our drainage systems do not consider the LA River to be part of our ecology,” Ruedas said. “There’s no filtration, no efforts to contain any of the metals or any of the bacteria that’s happening at our drainage. It’s a straight shot from wherever the fire is straight into the city of Long Beach. And we saw that very clearly.”

Some groups, including East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, have resorted to self-testing the water out of a growing skepticism for official oversight.

Ruedas said their testing last month along the L.A. River near Long Beach has come back, and they hope to present it to the public in the next week or so. Unable to give too much information, Ruedas said they did notice in their data collection there were heavy spikes in the presence of metals along the river from June 20 to 22.

Ruedas says the region desperately needs to fix how it responds and how it communicates to the public when and where hazardous materials are present.

That requires not just fixing a broken warning system but looking years into the future, he said: “How do we want our drainage systems to look? How do we want to limit not just isolated fire events, but just the entire way we think about water in the city of LA and the county of LA.”

Long Beach is now discussing updated notification protocols with Orange County and Los Angeles County.

“When any event that significantly impacts our water quality and puts the public at risk, it should trigger notification, protocol monitoring and coordination,” Councilmember Duggan said.

The L.A. Regional Water Quality Control Board is set to take up the topic next month, in a presentation that will review sampling taken along the river and an update on the facility cleanup. Those interested in watching the meeting or reviewing its agenda can click here.

As fans of Big Bear’s famous bald eagles emotionally recover from Jackie’s death, many are now wondering what’s next for the nest and her long-time mate Shadow.

Will he stay in the same spot with a new eagle mate and continue the livestream legacy? Will he build a new nest in a tree without cameras?

Jenny Voisard, spokesperson for Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that launched the popular eagle livestream, said they want to see Shadow thrive and “live his best life,” no matter where that may be.

“It could be that he chooses to go some place else and move on,” Voisard told LAist. “In which case, we would imagine someone else would take over the nest, but we don't know for sure. All we can do is watch.”

Next steps for Shadow

Shadow may start to look for a mate once his hormones kick in, usually around December or January. In years past, Jackie and Shadow would return to the nest and start delivering sticks at the end of fall into early winter. Jackie’s hormones typically kicked in sooner than Shadow’s, Voisard said.

Shadow has been seen with another, younger eagle lately called KD1. KD1 is believed to be a more than 4-year-old female bald eagle from the Prado Basin, according to Jenna Carpenter, a wildlife biologist with the Orange County Water District.

KD1 was banded in 2022, along with its sibling from their parental pair known as Ricky and Lucy, Carpenter said. (Jackie’s parents were also named Ricky and Lucy, but district officials said it's not the same eagles.) KD1 wears two identifying bands on its legs. One is lavender-colored and easier to see from a distance, like on the livestream cameras.

KD1 can be identified by the bands on its legs, including a lavender-colored one that makes the eagle easier to spot on the livestream cameras.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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“It's possible that KD1 stays in Big Bear, but it's also possible that KD1 moves on,” Carpenter said in a video. “In the first five years of a bald eagle's life, they're pretty nomadic. They fly around looking for good habitat, good places to find food, not necessarily looking for a territory quite yet.”

That may change once KD1 gets closer to 5 years old, which she added is the breeding age for eagles and when females can start laying eggs.

Carpenter said it’s a “gift” to come across KD1 in the wild, but she also cautioned that people need to recognize that the eagles are wild animals.

“They don't follow the same social norms as we as humans do,” she said “So it's a good idea to put on the science-colored glasses and remember that wildlife is wildlife.”

Voisard said if Shadow does find a new mate, whether it's KD1 or another eagle, “we will love whoever that is and we will cheer her on.”

Will Jackie be honored in some way?

Travis Scott, CEO of Visit Big Bear, told LAist that several community groups and organizations — including Friends of Big Bear Valley — are working together on a celebration to honor Jackie.

They’ve come up with multiple early ideas, including an event centered around wildlife, conservation and education with opportunities that recognize the “extraordinary connection Jackie created between Big Bear and people around the world,” Scott said.

“The goal is to create something that feels meaningful, appropriate, and true to Jackie’s legacy — not simply a memorial, but a celebration of the wonder, awareness, conservation, and environmental stewardship she inspired,” he said in an email.

The partners will be meeting Monday to narrow down more detailed plans, according to Scott. 

The Ontario Tower Buzzers, the Single-A minor league affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers, will be hosting a "Fly High, Jackie Night" at ONT Field on Sunday, Aug. 23. Half of the proceeds from tickets purchased through this link will be donated to Friends of Big Bear Valley, according to the team.